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This year marks the 25th anniversary of the Maoists submitting their 40-point demand, a milestone widely regarded as the start of the Maoist armed uprising in Nepal. In the years that followed, 17,000 Nepalis lost their lives, thousands more were displaced, the economy was shattered, monarchy abolished, and a new federal republic of Nepal took shape.

We look back to that discarded moment of history–the submission of the 40-point demand–to ask if the bloodshed, violence, and turmoil that followed could have been avoided. Does it hold a lesson for us?

On 4 February 1996, Baburam Bhattarai and Pampha Bhusal arrived at Singha Durbar to submit their 40-point demand but were denied entry. In protest, Bhusal sprawled out on the road, blocking traffic. In the few minutes of commotion that ensued, a minister’s convoy was held up.

So much of history turns on an instant.

The minister happened to recognize Bhattarai. He called the Prime Minister’s office. Sher Bahadur Deuba was the PM then.

The two were ushered in. They got to meet Deuba briefly, and present the Maoist demands, which included a threat to start an armed uprising within two weeks if the demands were not met.

Deuba was occupied that day as he was preparing for a state visit to India. He shrugged off the meeting, and later that week, left for India. Less than two weeks later, the Maoists attacked the police post at Holeri, Rolpa. The armed Maoist uprising had begun.       

History has come full circle.

Today, Deuba is Prime Minister again. He is busy preparing for a visit to Glasgow, United Kingdom to attend the UN Climate Change Conference.

Also read: Unfree minds

Pampha Bhusal sits across the table from him as part of his cabinet, as the Minister of Energy, Water Resources, and Irrigation.

As Bhusal sprawled out before the gates of Singha Durbar 25 years ago demanding to meet Deuba, did anyone have the foresight to imagine them huddled together in a cabinet meeting?

Had Deuba been provided a glimpse of the future when he was rushing through the meeting 25 years ago, would he have listened more carefully? Could history have been altered, the bloodshed of the armed uprising avoided?

If Bhusal and the Maoists had similarly been provided a glimpse of the future and were able to see that their demands—the abolition of monarchy, secularism, federal republic—were a lot closer within reach, would they have chosen a less violent path that avoided the bloodshed of the armed uprising?

The lesson for us from this incident should be that change doesn’t need to be all turmoil. Everything doesn’t need to be destroyed. Change can also be managed. For that, we need to find the courage to recognize and appreciate the underlying forces that are shaping change.

Nepal’s energy sector must draw from the lesson and listen more carefully to the underlying forces shaping it.

The sector is in crisis. The government’s narrative of excess electricity production has suddenly made Nepal’s hydropower potential seem irrelevant. At the same time, 80 percent of the country’s energy use still relies on traditional biomass fuels. Energy accounts for the largest share of imports.

Also read: Systemic dysfunction 

The government’s response to this crisis has been to centralize authority and decision-making. It is working actively to centralize the design of Nepal’s energy system and make it structurally more reliant on government’s authority.

The forces sweeping the electricity sector are tugging in the opposite direction. Distributed renewable energy technologies are eroding the authority of electric monopolies and enabling customers to be both users and producers of electricity. Digital technologies are reshaping how consumers and distributed technologies interact with one other, conduct business, and optimize production and use. Distributed renewable energy technologies are empowering customers to do more in a cleaner and sustainable manner than centralized systems have ever been able to do.

In 1996, Prime Minister Deuba shrugged off Bhattarai, Bhusal and the Maoists. Today, through its policies and program, the government is shrugging off the movement that is building around distributed renewable energy.

For Bhusal, the energy minister, who 25 years ago lay on the road in front of the gates of Singha Durbar demanding decentralization, it is an ironic twist of history that she is now creating policies that are centralizing our energy destiny in the hands of a few. 

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Let me share a recent personal dilemma with you. I came across an online course on Public Policy Analysis offered by the London School of Economics and Political Science, and I was immediately sold on it. But this 10-week course is priced a hard-to-afford $3,000. With some quick calculations, I figured I could afford to spend around $500 at the moment and I have initiated a fundraising for the rest of the amount through my social media profile.

This has, expectedly, raised some strong reactions both in support and against the idea. I have strong reasons for doing this.

As a columnist, I am aware of the standard of our public discourse. It is awful. But I don't blame my own creed for the same. I don't want to embarass myself and my publishers by putting the amount here, but the remuneration is such a negligible amount that one can hardly justify any effort on research for the columns. And there is no way for us columnists to take loans to upgrade our analytical skills and pay back through what the papers pay us. But upskilling ourselves is an absolute necessity.

The public intellectual ecosystem in Nepal has survived on a flawed balance. Higher education abroad is very costly, almost unthinkable without a scholarship even for the well-to-do families, and higher education in the country is completely untrustworthy. Research work and dissertations that are mandatory for degree courses are openly available on sale at university campuses. 

Ideally, our institutions, like the media houses we write for, should support such efforts. But that's beyond the scope at the moment. Most media houses hardly pay for opinion columns and editors think they are doing a favor to the writers by publishing their pieces. Therefore, scholarships have become a political tool for the powerful external players in Nepal to maintain their hold over the opinion makers. 

So, I have three strong reasons for initiating this crowdfunding for myself. First, I am convinced that upgrading my skills on Public Policy Analysis has become an absolute necessity. I became a writer by passion. I write in English as well as Nepali, and my effort has been to bring forward the perspective from the grassroots. I am based in rural Nepal and have engaged myself in some micro-entrepreneurships and social projects in my hometown. 

Also read: Opinion | Systemic dysfunction

In a nutshell, I experience a completely different Nepal than what is projected in the discourse by Kathmandu-based armchair analysts. My effort is to convey to the larger world what I experience on a day to day basis in my villages. But I am not a trained policy analyst, and I find my own insights overly influenced by personal grievances and anecdotal impressions. Therefore, I felt skills to analyse policy related matters through structured framework based processes would add value to my writing. 

Second, I want to bring forward the fact that in countries like Nepal quality higher education is unaffordable even for the relatively well-off citizens, and what is affordable is absolute rubbish. Politics has ruined Tribhuvan University. Professors are taken on a quota basis in accordance with their affiliation to the political parties and this is directly reflected in the quality of higher education. It has become common to reward plagiarists and corrupt academicians with powerful positions. As a result, these institutions have become a mess and have lost all credibility. I don't have an iota of trust that our universities will provide knowledge and skills worth the time spent gaining the degree.

Third, and the most important reason I think I am justified in initiating this fundraising, is that I promise to initiate an online course on Public Discourse and  Public Policy Analysis along with some friends, and have vowed to run it for free for 20 participants. Learning from a credible institution like the LSE is a personal dream for me, but creating affordable learning opportunities for many more, here in Nepal, is an even more important need of the hour.

My endeavor has sparked interesting reactions on both ends. While many have committed to funding the initiative, appreciating my desire to learn, many others have ridiculed the approach. I may have a different opinion about it later in hindsight, but at the moment, I find it absolutely necessary to raise these issues.

Democracy thrives on public discourse. And if our opinion makers are not independent, we are nurturing a servile ecosystem based on a self-destructing fallacy in the name of public intellectualism.

Nepal’s decennial census has been taking place since 1911, with 2021 marking the 12th one. The census should have been begun in June this year but was delayed by a few months due to the coronavirus pandemic.

The Central Bureau of Statics (CBS) kicked off the national population census program in the second week of September. In the first phase, it completed enlisting households, and the second phase aimed at collecting population data door-to-door will commence on November 11. It will take at least another six months to process the final census data, according to CBS officials.

Organizing a census every 10 years is an international practice, and prescribed both by the United Nations and the national constitution. Article 281 of the constitution says: “The Government of Nepal shall make appraisal and review of the implementation of special rights of the women and Dalit community and impacts thereof, based on human development index, concurrently with a national census to be held in every 10 years.”

As the 2021 census is underway, there are deliberations among policy experts and government officials that time may be ripe for a reform of the current census system.

Many countries are switching to alternatives, which have also been recognized by the United Nations. In Nepal’s context, there haven’t been any such initiations. Even within the current decennial census, modern technology could be used to make data-collection more efficient and effective. Senior CBS officials concede that there has been little or no effort in changing the traditional system.  

As the administrative data system is mismanaged, CBS is compelled to collect all required data by preparing a long list of questions.

Also read: Burdened with books

Hem Raj Regmi, deputy director general at CBS, terms Nepal’s census system ‘unscientific’ and ‘overburdened’. “In other countries, hardly 15-20 questions are asked during the census, but we have prepared 80 questions,” he says. “This is because our permanent administrative bodies don’t have any organized data on their respective areas.”

Experts and officials say the government ought to work on making the current census system more efficient and technology-friendly. At the same time, the government should prepare for an alternative.

Why switch?

As the country has already adopted a three-tier governance system, local governments which enjoy both resources and rights, according to experts, should be empowered to collect data regularly. The current untidy process which takes months to produce the final result should be changed. As things stand, provincial and local governments are dependent on the CBS to get the data of their area.  

The current method of the census is also costly. According to the CBS, the 2021 census will cost over Rs 4 billion, an increase of 233 percent compared to the previous one in 2011. More than 70 percent of the budget would be spent on salaries and perks of census staff as they need to reach an estimated seven million households across the country. According to Regmi, the expenditure is likely to exceed the given budget.

Rudra Suwal, senior economist and former deputy director general at CBS, says census costs will further increase in coming decades, and thus the government should start searching for options.

Planners, policymakers, political parties, and other stakeholders need up-to-date data to formulate and execute policies and plans. Another vital use of census data is while delineating electoral constituencies based on geography and population. The data from the 2011 census is still being used, and the new data being collected now will be used at least until 2032.

Also read: Systemic dysfunction

The current data collection process is time-consuming and there are reliability issues as well. During the long process (from filling of forms to analyzing data), errors could find their way into the system as all documents are hand-written, says Suwal. (Albeit, from this time, CBS staff have started using tablet computers in a few districts.) Moreover, to collect household data, surveyors have to reach every door, and even then they may not find anyone home.

Right time

As the country has already adopted a federal system and provincial and local governments are in place, experts suggest local governments conduct census on a daily basis.

Such a process has already been recognized by the UN, and some countries are practicing it, says Suwal.  “Every day, we get updated information on the population, which is known as vital registration. Norway and Denmark don’t conduct any census as their vital registrations serve the purpose.”

“Now that internet and technology are also widely available in Nepal, we too can shift to vital registration,” Suwal adds. To fully switch to vital registrations, according to officials, the government’s regular administrative bodies must be empowered to collect the data of their respective areas.

For example, the Ministry of Land Reform and Management maintains data on women’s land ownership, but the CBS is also collecting such data through the census. “The current census is an onerous and costly affair. But before choosing an alternative system we need to develop a system of collecting data from our administrative bodies at all three levels of government,” says Regmi.

According to him, more and more categories of data are being collected during the census to fulfill Nepal’s international obligations, but there has been little progress in making the process more efficient. 

We as a society barely ask a basic question, what are schools and books for? To help students adjust in the competitive and dynamic society? Or, to model them into our social frame? Perhaps, for both. For simplicity, let us not indulge in defining different but related jargons—education, teaching/learning, literacy, curricula, aims, objectives, outcomes, achievements, ethics and the like.

Schools are considered essential. State, society and parents invest in them, trust them with training young minds. The governments designate ministries, bureaus, councils or departments to take care of the schools (‘school’ here includes all levels and categories of institutions providing education or training). These designated governmental bodies, schools and communities develop and implement the modalities, contents and other details. Students are rarely involved in decision-making; most parents are considered unknowledgeable and required to oblige to what the system offers. Both the parents and children are helpless when the system does not allow the student’s promotion to next grade for his failure to achieve minimum competency in a language that is not his own!

Besides what the students are being taught and how they are being helped, the weight the students have to carry in the form of books, stationery and other supplies is alarming. A grade seven Nepali student weighing 29 kg carries an average burden of 6.5 kg as a schoolbag, 8.5 kg if the melodica is included. Even kindergarteners have to carry bags! While the majority of kids in urban areas either have access to school bus or are helped by guardians, those in remote countryside have to carry the load themselves, walking up and down the hills and sometimes crossing rivers on the way.

Also read: Systemic dysfunction

The detrimental effects of disproportionate bag weights are clear. A 1994 Scandinavian Journal of Rehabilitation Medicine article based on studies in 1,178 school children in France discussed musculoskeletal problems (lumber, thoracic and leg pains) associated with backpack use, which has become an increasing concern with school children. A 2005 Applied Ergonomics article found as many as 77 percent of secondary school students in New Zealand experienced musculoskeletal symptoms, including upper and lower back pains, due to their heavy school bags.

Indian students suffered no less. As Awantika and Shalini Agrawal report in International Journal of Research (2015), most of the 10-13 year-old students in Lucknow, India, felt pain from carrying a bag comparable to pain from physiological stress.

The 2006 Children School Bags (Limitation on Weight) Bill passed by the Indian Rajya Sabha asked the government to ensure that there would be no school bag for a child studying in nursery and Kindergarten. For children in other grades, the weight of the school bag should be no more than 10 percent of body weight. The law, never implemented, would have made the schools violating the rules liable for a fine of up to three lakh Indian rupees.

As pressure builds, regulations and policies limiting the weight of school bags are finding space in India, which also addressed this issue in its National Educational Policy, 2020. It suggests the weight of a school bag for students between grades 1-10 should be no more than 10 percent of their body weight. Now onwards, Indian schools are required to keep a digital weighing machine inside school premises and monitor the weight of school bags on a regular basis.

What makes the bag heavy?

First, ignorance and a misguided mentality. Schools, the sources of ‘light’ are full of ignorance. They act as if the volume of books their students carry reflect the education, skills, discipline, wisdom and creativity they impart; it is comparable to their majestic-looking, fearful, English, ‘suit and tie’ culture aimed at mercilessly collecting high education fees from poor parents who make the payments hoping their kids will escape the hardships they were forced to bear. Misguidedly, parents and kids do not complain against the bulging of the school bags.

Second, profit motives. The indirect, mean, greedy intentions of those promoting the sales of such books become visible if the whole of business is seen in detail. Consumerism is encouraged; no, it is injected, in the book market. Even if the curriculum remains the same, the publishers revise the textbooks, although they know such revisions are cosmetic, just to ensure the students cannot use old books. They want to add both the number and volume of books.

Also read: Fond memories of my grandfather and Dashains past

Third, the bookworm culture. For centuries, learning and memorization of vocabulary, mathematics, classical grammar, facts and figures formed the bulk of school education. It was the best way to educate students in a mostly illiterate society. Now that most of our population has become literate, the bookworm culture should be replaced with a system more conducive to the building of a harmonious society, one which sows creativity in pupils and prepares them to cope with an unseen future.

Recently introduced computers and internet should not (and have not) replaced printed books, but unfortunately, these have added to the burden in the sense that the pupils are asked to prepare and print so called ‘project reports’ and ‘powerpoint presentations’ on this and that topic, which the kids prepare with the help of the Wikipedia and guardians.

Fourth, unnecessary homework. Schools and parents don’t realize that children need free time, time for physical activities and entertainment, and time to communicate with family members and friends. Students in lower grades should not be given homework at all; for them, learning should be a game, a pleasure. Students in higher grades can be given limited assignments, just enough to encourage their independent learning, no more.

Fifth, lack of lockable drawers for students. Letting students leave their heavy books in the classroom would help reduce their burden. Schools should provide such facilities.

The author is a professor of pharmacy at Tribhuvan University